David A. Poulsen's Young Adult Fiction 3-Book Bundle. David A. Poulsen
I was thinking Friday.
Something else I didn’t expect — that Vietnam would be all about partying on a Saturday night. Then the old man said, “This is good right here.”
I looked around. Terrific. No hotel in sight. So we were going to haul our stuff around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City in the middle of the night for a while. This was getting to be more fun all the time.
The old man paid the driver, and a minute later we were standing in the middle of a brightly lit street. Big-time crowded.
“Now what?” I started to organize my stuff into walking mode. “You forget that we had a hotel, or did you lie to me about that? We just going to wander the streets until morning.”
“The Rex isn’t far from here. We need to eat first.”
“A lot of guys might have dropped their bags off first then walked back to this charming little spot for dinner.” I waved my arm around to indicate the charm.
“Yeah, we could’ve done it that way, but we didn’t, so now we eat, then we’ll head for the Rex. And, by the way, you complain way too much.”
He pointed to what looked like an outdoor lunch counter. People were sitting at seats that faced into the part where the cooks were making stuff. There were some benches a few feet back from where the people were eating. Every time somebody finished eating and stood up to leave, someone from the benches would race in there like this was the most exclusive restaurant in Asia and you were lucky to get in. It looked pretty dumpy to me. Especially compared to a lot of the places I’d seen as we were driving around. No band in this place and no karaoke.
I kept my mouth shut. I’d hate to be labelled a complainer. Especially when we were having all this fun.
We took over one of the benches, got our stuff gathered close around us, and watched the backs of the people who were eating. I tried to get a read on who’d finish next from the way they were sitting and making little eating movements. Couldn’t really tell.
It started to rain. Perfect. Not hard, but even soft rain’s still wet. The people at the counter who were eating were under a sort of canvas canopy. Out of the rain. The people at the benches — as in us — weren’t.
I looked over at the old man. He seemed to be, I guess you’d say, intense. Alive. Interested. Not at all bothered by the rain. He turned to me and said, “It rains a fair bit in Vietnam, so get used to it.” Heading me off before I could complain.
Sure, nothing to it. I’d get used to the rain just like I’d get used to hauling luggage around the streets of the city on foot in the middle of the night and sitting on a bench getting wet and cold waiting for a turn to eat at a place that looked like the ol’ health inspectors just might have missed it. Hell, anybody would get used to that, right?
We sat there for about fifteen minutes. Some people left. Others took their places at the counter. Finally, it looked like it was getting to be our turn. A couple of people finished eating in front of us, and I got ready to make my move. The old man put his hand on my arm. He nodded at a really old lady and a kid maybe my age. They were at the next bench to us, and I was pretty sure they’d got there after us.
They stepped forward and took the two spots at the counter. Didn’t even look at the old man to thank him or anything.
“That was stupid,” I said. “That old lady already has like a million wrinkles. The rain isn’t going to do anything to her.”
The old man smiled. “We’re next.”
Our turn finally came, and we took a couple of seats at the counter. I wasn’t all that comfortable, mostly because I had jammed everything I owned in where my feet were meant to go. I was sure we were surrounded by bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff. We were sitting with our backs to the street, which I didn’t like either because I figured that made things even easier for bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff.
The old man didn’t seem all that worried about it. He was concentrating on ordering. There was no menu, just signs on the wall and hanging from the ceiling above where the cooking was going on. The signs were in Vietnamese, which meant I couldn’t figure out squat that was on them. The Vietnamese alphabet is like ours, as opposed to the symbols that are the Chinese and Japanese alphabets, but that only helps to a point. French uses the same alphabet as us too, but if you’re not French, you still can’t read it.
There were a couple of pictures of food, but I didn’t recognize any of it. The old man studied the signs.
“What do you suggest?” I asked him
He didn’t answer, and it was pretty loud in there, so I tried again, louder this time. “What’s any good?”
“Noodles.”
“What if I don’t like noodles?”
“Then you shouldn’t have got off the plane.”
“There’s a lot of stuff written up there. It can’t all be noodles.”
“I’ll order for you.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is, or will it be a surprise?”
The guy who seemed to be taking orders came along just then, so I didn’t get an answer. The old man did some pointing, held up four fingers and threw out a few words in Vietnamese. The order guy said some stuff back. It sounded like he was giving the old man hell for something. Then he looked at me, not real friendly, and walked away, shouting in the direction of the people who were cooking.
“So what am I having?”
“Noodles and fish.”
“Is the fish cooked?”
The old man shrugged.
“Will it be dead at least?”
“Pretty much.”
“You speak very much Vietnamese?”
“Some. I used to be pretty good. But I’ve forgotten a lot.”
That was it for conversation. The old man didn’t seem to feel like talking, and I was too tired to try.
I’ll say one thing — the place got the food out really fast. It was maybe a minute or so before I was staring down at a plate full of noodles and some things sitting on top of the noodles that I assumed — and hoped — were chunks of fish. It was all steaming and, actually, didn’t look or smell, that bad. I took the chopsticks and moved some of the noodles around, checking for anything that crawled. I didn’t see anything.
For a few minutes the old man and I just ate, no talking. The thing is I’m okay with chopsticks, but I kind of have to work at it. So I was concentrating pretty hard.
“Not bad,” I shouted after I’d worked my way through some of the noodles and one piece of the fish. “What kind of fish is it?”
The old man didn’t answer. He pointed at one of the pictures, which was exactly zero help. I got the feeling that whenever he thought I might not like the answer to one of my questions, he just didn’t bother to respond.
He chewed for a while, then looked at me. “You play any baseball?”
“What?” It wasn’t the conversation I expected to be having in that place at that exact time.
“Baseball. You play any?”
“Little League.”
“You any good?”
“Not bad, I guess. I played shortstop and once in a while catcher. Our team made it to the city finals one year. But we lost. I made an error in the last inning. Probably cost us the game.”
“Shit happens.”
“I thought we had a rule about saying